crdahlberg

Moonrise Over Lowe’s

The second trip to the hardware store to fix the toilet would complete the job.

The first trip had provided me with a top-of-the-line flushing mechanism consisting of a plastic emergency water shutoff gizmo to solve the nasty Running Water Syndrome from which some toilets suffer. A secondary chain poised at a precise tipping point would trip a sliding valve in the case of a stuck rubber flapper drain malfunction, shutting down the water intake as spectacularly as Moses holding back the Red Sea.

Experts in exotic toilet flushing devices will know exactly what this is and how it operates. The rest of us—well, me, at least—couldn’t get the darn thing to work. Arms soaked, finger-skin shriveled and spongy, a pool of water around the base of the toilet floating away the floor tiles, water shutoff valve all but worn out from all the on and off twisting, tank water drained enough times to fill a ten-foot-at-the-deep-end swimming pool, I finally surrendered. The thing wound up in the trash can; I didn’t want to return it to the store and risk the chance that another customer would purchase it, try to install it, and ponder suicide in his failed attempt to get it to work in his own toilet.

Returning to the hardware store for my replacement purchase, the sheer quantity of hardware gadgetry and home improvement devices in a single aisle at Lowe’s makes a person appreciate why the population of China is required to be so enormous. It takes a huge percentage of the population to produce the vast selection of goods crowding the shelves. If we couldn’t rely on them, these aisles would be empty.

Electronic mousetraps, pivoting ladders and exotic window blinds able to be opened and closed in any of 15 possible pre-set configurations all crowded the aisles for attention. My head swooned. I looked at my list to remind myself why I had come. It said: “Very basic toilet flusher.” Oh, yeah.

I found the very basic toilet flusher I had picked up and discarded on my previous toilet flusher-seeking trip. This time, I picked it up lovingly, like a butcher picks out the perfect steak. Yes, this would do it. Perfect. No gadgets. And the box said, “World’s quietest toilet flusher.” What was there not to like? It rode to the checkout stand in my cart alone, not sharing the space, like a homecoming queen perched upon a float.

It’s a wonderful occasion to find the thing that suits one’s needs, whether a toilet flusher, a good fitting pair of shoes, or a love that has been long-sought. It makes the world feel right.

As I walked to my car in the Lowe’s parking lot, my black plastic treasure in my white shopping bag, the moon was rising, its luminescent light reminding me of the bright and shiny white porcelain of a lowly, soon-to-be rehabilitated toilet bowl.

Damaged Bodies

This morning on the radio, I heard a woman tell the story of losing her voice. In place of her vocal chords, which had been removed because of disease, a device in her throat tried to overlay words upon the breath she expelled from her lungs. The resulting communication could not mimic the subtle intonations that a human voice produces. What remained was a digitally-produced monotone simulation of speech, her emotions drained from her words.

I expected this woman to be bitter over losing her own voice forever, never to sing, never to speak without drawing unwanted attention from those within earshot.

The sounds she emitted were less than sonorous. But the words she delivered were haunting.

“People remember me now,” she explained.

“Where have you been?” the salesperson had asked. “I’ve missed seeing you!” Our vocal-chord deprived friend had visited the shop only once previously—a full year ago.

“Since I lost my voice, I’ve never been happier,” the odd, buzzing voice explained. “I’ve learned to value what I have left. I still have my life. Yes, I may have lost my voice,” the digitized vocal chords continued, “but I’ve really gained my life. From that day forward, I have never had a bad day–ever!”

Despite having minimal ability to express emotions through her voice, her words had no difficulty traveling from her heart to mine.

I felt myself shrink just a bit. I wondered what conditions it takes to have a good day.

Losing a voice might do it. Paralysis might do it.

Or maybe changing an attitude would do it.

Imagine that.

Mental Television

When is Yogi Berra’s birthday? What date did the War of 1812 begin? Exactly how many days until July 4? How many years and days old is your friend? What day did Saigon fall to North Vietnam?

If you’re standing on the corner waiting for the bus with John (not his real name), as I do nearly every workday, he could instantly tell you the answers to these and a great variety of other odd, date-related trivia questions. John has an exceptional ability to recall and calculate dates.

He does not consider his abilities exceptional. In fact, John assumes that everyone should be able to perform these same mental gymnastics.

John is exceptional in another way—he speaks with perfect diction. Not just good diction—perfect diction. He eschews colloquialisms and possesses such a perfectly neutral dialect that, had he served as his speech coach, he could have made George W. Bush sound positively educated.

There’s one more unusual thing about John. He’s schizophrenic. He is so heavily medicated that all expression is permanently drained from his face. He struggles to stay awake, even when he’s standing at the bus stop.

John regularly lists all the old VHS tapes and DVD movies he has recently watched, listing all the actors’ names, the names the characters play in the movie, and of course, the year of each movie’s release.

John waits with me at the bus stop as he travels from the mental health facility to his group home. In one hand he always clasps a round red plastic container held together with scotch tape, white paper cutouts taped to the front to mimic a television screen and tuning knobs. The white paper at the top identifies his construction as “Mental Television.” In his other hand he holds a crude, hand-made semblance of a person’s face drawn on paper cup and attached to the end of a screw. It represents the face of a man who is watching the Mental Television.

I hope to see him at the bus stop again tomorrow, when I will again try to understand my friend, the Fabulous Calendar Man, and tune into the Mental Television that holds his view of the world.

The Undergarment Revolt

It’s the sort of mistake any young store clerk could make. But it’s also the sort of mistake that could get a person fired from the retail industry—working alone in the women’s undergarment department, she had mistakenly left the drawer open.

It’s not that this sort of carelessness has never happened before, but this singular event may have launched an unexpected revolt in the undergarment industry. Indeed, the so-called Spring Revolutions recently blazing around the world may have finally come home to roost on our own favorite retail clothing store shelves.

There’s more to say about our beleaguered sales girl in a few moments…

Some say that the fabled Boxer Shorts Rebellion started it all. Protesting poor shelving conditions in a particularly dilapidated K-Mart store, men’s underwear had gone berserk—not the employees, but the underwear itself. After careful planning, sometime during the darkened nighttime hours, as the security guard inspected plumbing supplies at the far end of the store, Men’s Shorts gathered their combined strength into a unified effort and slid quietly from their wrappers, swapping packaging with one another. During the mass rebellion, 30” waist size briefs exchanged packaging with 44” size boxer shorts. Fashionable, Speedo-like apparel in bold purple and green patterns ended up disguised in the wrappings of special-purpose easy-on disposable, moisture-resistant medical undergarments.

The payoff came the day after the purchase of the underwear, when irritated customers of all dimensions and proportions angrily returned their mislabeled goods. One beanpole-shaped fellow complained that his brand new shorts were so large that they disappeared down his pant legs. Another red-faced customer of enormous potbellied proportions threatened to sue if the feeling didn’t soon return to his mid-region, claiming that he was nearly strangulated by a pair of microscopic sport briefs masquerading in a box colorfully labeled “Fashionable Styles for Portly Gentlemen.”

The rebellion was so overwhelmingly successful and held such enduring impact that the men’s undergarment department had been shut down and disbanded. Atop the empty shelves were forbidding warning signs, declaring “Shop at Your Own Risk!” These signs had been scrawled over with newer disclaimers: “Due to English Language Problems with Suppliers in Thailand, Product Contents Can No Longer Be Guaranteed.”

The ensuing copy-cat episodes in other men’s undershorts departments in neighboring stores strangled reliable supplies and raised the local men’s undershorts costs. For three months running, men’s undergarment sales became Internet giant Amazon’s most profitable revenue source.

Some say it’s the elastic in the undergarments that made possible the nimble maneuvers in and out of boxes so rampant among men’s undershorts. If true, the theory yields credence to the very newest contagion of the spreading dilemma: women’s undergarments. Similarly elastic, the potential revolution among women’s departments could be even more calamitous. Untold yards of angry stretching and snapping elastic, with sinister purposes, could pose a far greater threat to the security of the nation’s undergarment supply.

And so we return again to our hapless women’s undergarment clerk who left the drawer open, and whom I happened to photograph at the very moment of the dawn of this new feminine undies insurrection. Panic stricken, one can see the young woman, clad in black, grabbing for the massively escaping avalanche of unmentionables, making their getaway from the unlocked drawer towards the freedom just beyond the store’s doorway.

Standing just beyond the door, I panicked at their sinister approach toward me, straps wildly flailing like tentacles. I bolted down the street out of cowardice and fear of the deranged elastic, uncertain what damage massive quantities of these angry garments could inflict. Bruised skin from close-range, furious snappings would be the least of my concerns. Pit marks and scarring from metal clasps, asphyxiation by elastic strangulation—it was all possible.

I sympathized with the injustice heaped upon the undergarments, their inhumane storage in quarantine-like conditions within locked, pitch-black drawers. But I also pitied the unsuspecting young woman clerk, nearly out of her mind with fear over her own fate.

My call to 911 brought the police and firemen, who arrived just as the first garments snapped and stretched beneath the door, intent on their rubber-charged gallop down the street.

Their escape was short-lived. As chemicals from the firemen’s hoses quickly mixed with that of the garments, the lively snapping and popping of elastic turned into a gargling, bubbling goo as, in short order, the chemical reaction dissolved both the garments and their frenzied game plans. Within moments, the firemen’s hoses had turned the undies into melted mini-towers of pink and yellow and white sloppy glop.

From somewhere deep within the mass of melting cotton, nylon, Spandex and lace, there came a faint voice: “Ladies, stick together! We will rise again!”

Candy Canes, Bats and Angels

One of the better veggie burgers in town is served in a restaurant that shares two names, honoring the two restaurants that merged some years ago. Retaining both names meant creating a hybrid menu representing the best of both restaurants, so the selections range from burgers to an extensive assortment of Mexican dishes. Behind the restaurant is a popular hangout for young folks, where, before she became a well-known artist, the young singer, Jewel, would sing and strum.

Anticipating a veggie burger banquet, we entered the dual-name establishment, but suddenly sensed that something was amiss. Bright, jagged patterns of red and white stabbed the ceiling, displacing its usual drab comfort. An unexpected, inexplicable army of candy canes exploded above us, the display grabbing and gluing our eyeballs upward. Thousands of candy canes dangled from the ceiling, the beams, the air conditioning ductwork, the wiring.

What could be the meaning of this candy cane convention?

Gradually, the obvious dawned upon me: it was a holiday thing. The restaurant staff had taken a break from their bleak chores of battering chicken fried steak and eyeing and peeling potatoes, indulging instead in hanging cratefuls of holiday candy cane decorations in every hang-able niche.

The display was impressive. They hung from the rafters like inverted bats, awaiting their chance to fly.

Indeed, from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, in the dark of night sometime after the setting of the sun and the welcome gloom of the moon, the world’s biggest urban bat colony emerges for their daily feeding. In one night alone, the 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats will consume 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of insects.

Unlike the unpredictable appearance of the restaurant candy canes, these bats are a permanent fixture, giving relief from an otherwise Moses-scale plague of insect life. We can only imagine the misery of living without this batty multitude, giving us an umbrella of bug protection.

Another far more ancient and intimidating population, a legion of invisible Heavenly Hosts, also invades our world. It moves without the candy cane flash of seasonal restaurant décor. It lacks the predictable routine and daily schedule by which an under-bridge bat colony is controlled.

Instead, encampments of the Angelic Community are neither regulated by temporary seasons of celebration, nor are they governed by the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon.

Their place above the rafters of our world, the firmament, is never ending. And in the moment of our greatest need, these sentinals are spirited as emissaries, so that in a crowded but often lonely world, we are not left alone.

A Sidewalk Story

Had his head not been created facing up and outward, he would have missed seeing the emergence of the woman with a bright crimson flower in her hair gradually appearing before him, returning his gaze. He was the first to arrive, his green t-shirt clad creator having arrived early for the event.

His memories of his own former existence, beyond his current chalk-dust appearance, were clouded and lacking in historical perspective. He wondered again at the woman still emerging beneath the creative hand of the neighboring artist. Her eyes emerged, then her full face—a beautiful image, he thought, despite the odd clothing adorning her, from an age and context unlike his own, an Asian woman whose time and place he could not quite comprehend.

His confusion over his own appearance gradually cleared a bit; he recalled that had been a star of the silent film, a clown bearing the name Charlie Chaplin, later also enjoying success in the talking film era.

But outside of his current chalky existence, he remembered nothing of the past or the future. The chalk could resurrect nothing of history or context. Lacking a body of flesh to connect him, this moment was all he could know.

As his artist-creator added decoration around Charlie, it gave him time to peer over his shoulder to view another woman, dressed in Western Victorian style more familiar to his own context. A playful, billowing hat crowning her head drew his attention. Her artist created her as a splashy showgirl, her beauty expressed in shades of pink. When her gaze connected with Charlie’s, he saw the two of them gliding on a dance floor, music softly cushioning them, the warm light of candles extending their stay long into the evening. If only, he pondered, they were breathing, living and loving—fully formed three dimensional creatures instead of sidewalk chalk.

A sudden splash of color above his head jolted Charlie. It was a thing, or a man, or—was it a woman? A body draped in shocking tones, a stretched torso, absent arms and a single enormous eye—or was it? Again, lacking context beyond this day’s chalk-appearance, there was no way to comprehend its abstract expressionism. The geometric human figure puzzled him; their worlds were distant, detached from each other.

Then, appearing from yet another stretch of colored chalk dust, Charlie noticed a woman—a mother with her children surrounding her. As the artist chalk-stroked the mouths of the children, they seemed to come alive, crowding, teasing and playfully challenging each another—laughter—lots of laughter. On this day of their shared chalk lives, Charlie concluded that this was the most beautiful sight within his view—it held a vision of hope and of promise.

The orange hues of early sunset announced the gradual end of the brief existence of Charlie and his chalk cadre. Soon, uncareful shoes eroded the chalk, smearing their limbs, their hair, their faces, their eyes into the concrete sidewalk. Silently as they appeared, their dust mingled, their figures retiring again into timelessness.

As they disappeared, the artist creators likewise disappeared, drifting apart and dissolving into the deepening shadows, having resurrected, if only briefly, the somnambulist activities of shared chalk-drawn lives.

But unlike their creations, the artists reserved one power, which set them apart from their art: the power of choice.

They alone could choose to end their drift, to stop the dissolve of the paths that had brought them together today as artists with a dream. Against the approaching nightfall, they could still choose to pursue, to explore the new friendships this day had held for them. And they could join with each other, bringing one another along, past tonight, and into tomorrow.

Doing the Math

Albert Pujols will earn $250 million over the next ten years to play professional baseball for the Anaheim Angels; that’s $25 million a year under the terms of his new contract.

That’s all I know about Pujols. He gets paid very well to play with a small white ball. I rarely follow professional sports on television or in the newspaper. Admittedly, some human sports dramas, for example the Olympic Games, can be exciting. But huge paychecks make pro sports hard to enjoy; many of us simply can’t afford to attend many sport venues. Inflated ticket prices are required to help pay for the giant salaries being earned by the top players.

Of course, simply bellyaching over high professional sports salaries won’t solve the problem. In this sports-crazed society, lowering player salaries isn’t going to happen. So instead, let’s increase the salaries for the rest of us so they are commensurate with that of the sports elite.

Here’s how it works. Under this sports celebrity wage-matching approach, if we’re flipping burgers at a local hamburger joint, we’ll suddenly earn far more than our current minimum wage allows. Let’s suppose the owner gets paid an equivalent salary as the sports celebrity. Of course, we should expect the restauranteur to receive, say, 50 percent of that paycheck to pay for the restaurant’s operating costs plus his own salary. He’ll still have half of the $25 million sports celebrity salary–$12.5 million–to split among his 20 employees for their wages. That will give each of us burger flippers an annual salary of $625,000. I can live with that. Of course, the cost of a burger will rise accordingly.

But don’t worry. Remember, we’re all going to receive a sports celebrity-comparable wage increase.

Here’s another example. Let’s say we’re teachers. We’re easily instructing 150 students each day. To cover the school’s overhead—expenses like building repair, textbooks, utility bills and the like, 50 percent of our $25 million salary will be deducted. Fair enough because we still get to keep the other half—we’ll take home a $12.5 million salary. Teaching even the orneriest, manners-deprived kid is worth that kind of cash. My $25 million salary, divided by 150 students, will cost parents a mere $166,667 per child. No discounts available for multiple kids. (“Oh…will that be cash or check? Please, spell my name correctly.”) And, sorry, no credit cards accepted.

Think of this. Once all of our salaries are likewise upwardly-adjusted to meet sports celebrity salary standards, we’ll actually have enough money to purchase a ticket to watch Pujols play ball!

And, oh, let’s not forget to bring $250 for the sports celebrity-adjusted price of a Stadium Dog with relish!

Half-Drawn Shades

The shades are descending; they’re being pulled down. It’s the end of an era.

Today was the last reunion of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. The Association is being officially disbanded.

One Association member who survived the Japanese attack explains, “We just ran out of gas, that’s what it amounted to. We felt we ran a good course for 70 years. Fought a good fight. We have no place to recruit people anymore: Dec. 7 only happened on one day in 1941.”

The membership of the Association is gradually evaporating from the attrition of old age, poor health and death.

It’s an unavoidable reality. No matter what our age, change due to external influences presents its challenges, whether from age and health issues, or from job loss. We feel less in demand—less needed.

We may feel like out-of-print books. The contents are still useable, but the worn cover and bent spine are not so fashionable anymore. Our sphere of influence—if we feel we ever had one—is contracting still further.

That’s life. Over time, we sense our world eroding. Tasks that we performed with ease and skill are handed off to other folks we don’t know. No matter that we still can handle the tasks with the same ease and skill. Others don’t perceive it that way, and they are the ones now in control. It’s time for us to move on.

So…what’s next? Move on to what? Our ego feels deflated.

But it’s not like there’s nothing else to do.

There’s time to focus on relationships and the skills required to being a good friend. Listening more and talking less. Befriending those who have no ability to advance our own ambitions. Thanking them, aloud.

There’s time to focus on reinforcing our values. Relaxing one discipline in our lives seems to relax several disciplines. If we write down the things we would like most to change about ourselves, they nearly always relate to the lack of specific disciplines. Time to focus on our values.

There’s time to focus on undeveloped skills. A friend of mine is taking up writing. Always a good verbal communicator, job loss and health issues forced him to re-think his goals. He’s retooling himself to write promotional materials. He’s completed the coursework. He’s made contacts. He’s reinventing himself.

Maybe we should close the shades on the room in which we find ourselves, move on to the next room, and again eagerly raise the shades.

The view might just be better.

Notes on Trees

This year’s Thanksgiving festivities brought out the best in some of us.

Someone attached partially-completed notes to trees, a park bench, and anywhere else they could draw attention in front of one of our favorite little eateries.

The creators of the notes began many of them with, “I am thankful for…” with a blank space left for passersby to complete with their own words, while some were intentionally left blank, awaiting creative and heartfelt comments.

The note about friends is hard to beat.

But here are some other suggestions:

Perhaps it takes a purer faith to praise God for unrealized blessings than for those we once enjoyed or those we enjoy now. ~A.W. Tozer

O Lord that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness. ~William Shakespeare

Got no check books, got no banks. Still I’d like to express my thanks – I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night. ~Irving Berlin

Secret Friends

Maybe your secret friend was someone who you thought others would not approve of. Or perhaps that person didn’t quite fit your style because he or she was quite different from you. It’s not an easy thing when loyalty confronts conventional expectations.

One of my secret friends is a student I teach in the parole office. Give him some hair and remove his head-to-toe skinhead tattoos and he’d be your best next door neighbor. Thoughtful. Kind. Caring.

But with tattooed skinhead symbols, skulls scrawled all over him, and “5150” (“a person deemed to have a mental disorder that makes them a danger to him or her self, and/or others and/or gravely disabled”) around his neck, and he appears to be a social persona non grata. Not the sort of fellow you might want to be perceived as being your friend.

I’ve known him for over two years. He struggles to progress toward the academic goals I’ve hoped for him in my literacy lab at the parole office. Medications cause him to slump over his computer terminal frequently. I wake him up. Sometimes he leaves the class in a drug-induced stupor.

If he stopped taking the drugs, he would resume cutting his legs with his pocketknife. His legs are numb from nerve damage, making it difficult for him to ride his bicycle, his only means of transportation.

He started taking drugs to control his psychoses at the age of five. Growing up, he regularly battled his violent father, who soon left him and his mother. Now he now lives with a girlfriend in a motel, which, because of his disabilities, is partially subsidized by the parole department. Ironically, his girlfriend works as a security guard.

At age 15, he was incarcerated. He served 15 years for attempted murder and for assaulting a corrections officer while in prison.

Once enamored with skinheads, he now disdains them, recognizing that he gave up much of his life to remain loyal to their errant beliefs. An iron cross now covers the swastika tattooed on the back of his hand.

My friend believes in God, in many ways to God, and in many gods. He asks me to pray for him, and I do. He is glad for it, and he tells me so, and he tells me he prays for me.

In time, our paths will inevitably part. And when they do, we both will have benefited from our journey together.